ut both hands to ward him off,
crying aloud, "Brother! for God's sake, brother!" But Sebastian replied
by dealing him several stunning blows on the head with his double fist,
so that Jonathan sank down fainting. Sebastian hastily seized upon some
of the rolls of gold and was making off with them--in which naturally
enough he did not succeed.

Fortunately it turned out that none of Jonathan's wounds, which
outwardly wore the appearance of large bumps, had occasioned any
serious concussion of the brain, and hence none of them could be
esteemed as likely to prove dangerous. After a lapse of two months,
when Sebastian was taken away to the convict prison, where he was to
atone for his attempt at murder by a heavy punishment, the young lawyer
felt himself quite well again.

This terrible occurrence exerted such a shattering effect upon Master
Wacht that a consuming surly peevishness was the consequence of it.
This time the stout strong oak was shaken from its topmost branch to
its deepest root. Often when his mind was thought to be busy with quite
different matters, he was heard to murmur in a low tone, "Sebastian--a
fratricide! That's how you reward me?" and then he seemed to come to
himself like one awakening out of a nasty dream. The only thing that
kept him from breaking down was the hardest and most assiduous labour.
But who can fathom the unsearchable depths in which the secret links of
feeling are so strangely forged together as they were in Master Wacht's
soul? His abhorrence of Sebastian and his wicked deed faded out of his
mind, whilst the picture of his own life, ruined by Jonathan's love for
Nanni, deepened in colour and vividness as the days went by. This frame
of mind Master Wacht betrayed in many short exclamations--"So then your
brother is condemned to hard labour and to work in chains!--That's
where he has been brought by his attempted crime against you--It's a
fine thing for a brother to be the cause of making his own brother a
convict--shouldn't like to be in the first brother's place--but lawyers
think differently; they want justice, that is, they want to play with a
lay figure and dress it up and give it whatever name they please."

Such like bitter, and even incomprehensible reproaches, the young
advocate was obliged to hear from Master Wacht, and to hear them only
too often. Any attempt at rebutting these charges would have been
fruitless. Accordingly Jonathan made no reply; only often when his
hear